Specifically re: the "power" rating for a raw speaker driver, it is derived by testing in free air, full range over a 24 hour period. It is independant of all other system variables including the final enclosure, amplifier and the crossover. Oh yeah, in your final system you're probably more interested in listening to music rather than sine wave or pink noise. Put the Z-5500 driver in a box, add a 150 Hz or so high-pass filter and you now have a driver that can probably be "rated" closer to 100W (this is assuming the raw driver is rated at 15W as mentioned in this thread. I'm not sure how that was established for the Z-5500). If your satellite drivers are failing, I doubt it's because of their power rating.

I used something called batting. You can get it from a fabric store. It's what they stuff some pillows with.

I don't know if I'd use tangband speakers. I'm really not impressed with them.

I got my new speakers, and I have to say I actually liked the 680s better, except these look nicer and have no hissing nor rattling in the subwoofer. I actually found the 8 inch sub on the 680s to sound better and it was actually louder without distorting or making a thudding sound like these do a lot. I also notice the sub overwhelms the satellites at low volumes, but it's the other way around at higher volumes. I also find the satellites sound lousy at lower volume than they do at higher volume.

Either way, these are the first ones I've had that were good out of the box without a single problem, but I think I liked the sound of the others better. But I'm not going to complain. They are still loud!

Well, if you want it to play more detailed but less loud, you might want to modify the sat crossover frequency. I hooked my sats up to my onkyo amp and they went way lower than before. IMO the sub goes too high and the sats not low enough. I'm sure its worse with the 10"

Logitech must do this to get more volume, but it doesent sound to good. Theres no reason the 5500 should sound any worse than the 680 if your crossovers are configured right.

So I've still got my Z-560's in use (admittedly less now that I own a pair of Grados) and I'd like to modify them before I get into full fledged speaker building (especially amp and crossover designs, which I'm not looking forward to). Are there any enclosure designs for small drivers in particular that I should look at? I've got a few speaker building books on the way but I'd like to get more than just a couple authors' opinions.

Also, while I'm at it I was also thinking about building a new enclosure for the sub and maybe even replacing the driver in it too. To me all the 8" subs look the same aside from price. Manufacturer's spec claims are not much good to me either. Anyone have especially good results with a particular 8" sub? I realize subs this small aren't very popular but I was hoping for suggestions anyway. They can't be any worse than my uneducated decisions.

Hi... Going Back to post 21,
If any people are (like I was) looking for a way to use the amplifier with out the control pod heres my little guide..

1. Take the amplifer off the subwoofer. (I needed to cut some wires here to get it off enough)

2. Take off the back plate (lots of screws to undo here including some with bolts on the other side)

3. Take off the panel on the rear side which has the plug to the control panel. (once you've removed the bolts it just pulls off)

4. Now using the pin labels that you will find on the panel that you pulled off identify the VREGDD, MUTE AMP and STANDBY AMP pins (they are all in a line), use some single core wire to connect mute and standby to the vregdd (or put switches on) This will allow the amp to be turned on with out the control pod being attached.

And Thats it, make sure if you cut any wires to ease the amp off you fix them back up and cover with electrical tape

Now the amp can be turned on/off by the switch on the back or if you put switches on the STANDBY AMP Wire. One thing to note though is that the Amp now has no Pre-Amp which means no onbard volume control or crossovers so make sure you turn the volume right down on the source before you plug it in!!